Palm Lifts Indexes Higher With Solid 4Q Results

A good fourth quarter for PalmOne was about all the news investors needed to stage an afternoon rally Tuesday. That was lucky, too, as there was very little in the way of actionable news. Not only was the quarter good to PalmOne, execs told analysts that they expect fiscal 2005 sales to be $1.21 billion to $1.29 billion compared with analyst expectations of about $1.16 billion. Shares of PalmOne rose 37%, or $7.92, to $36.67.

Our InformationWeek 100 rose with the most energy among the indexes, closing up 1.5%, or 4.52 points, to 313.85. Right behind was the Nasdaq Composite, which rose 1%, or 19.77 points, to close at 1,994.15. Bringing up the rear were the S&P 500, which rose .4%, or 4.11 points, to 1,134.41; and the Dow, which rose .2%, or 23.6 points, to 10,395.07.

The Nasdaq-100 tracking stock rose a healthy 1.4%, or 52 cents, to $36.67 on rousing volume of 101 million shares.

See the full listing of all the companies in the InformationWeek 100 and the top 5 percentage winners and losers for the last closing here.